


You've Got The Love

by aslightstep



Series: Drabblethon: IronPanther Edition [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Idiots in Love, M/M, New Year's Eve, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-21 06:31:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9535958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aslightstep/pseuds/aslightstep
Summary: Time after time I think "Oh Lord, what's the use?"/Time after time I think it's just no good/Cause sooner or later in life the things you love you lose/But you've got the love I need to see me throughIt’s been a month since he kissed T’Challa and a year since he felt anything approaching happiness, and Tony Stark is tired of being alone. But New Years should mean new beginnings, right, Stark?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my Drabblethon series on tumblr. Song is You've Got the Love by Florence + the Machine.

“And you’re gonna be okay?” Rhodey asked for the millionth time.

“You mean you’re not tired of babysitting me?” Tony said into the phone, his voice straddling the line between teasing and razor-sharp.

“If anyone’s doing the babysitting here, it’s you,” Rhodey responded, and they both fell quiet. Tony pictured Rhodey on the other end of the line, sequestered off in some quiet corner of his mother’s house while his relatives laughed and danced in the other room. Sometimes he couldn’t bear to watch. Sometimes when they were together Tony would do the most mundane thing, like stretch up for a coffee mug on a high shelf or lean down to grab something off the floor, and when he turned back to his friend Rhodey was turning away, his hand over his mouth.

Tony, sitting in the quiet of his car as it idled in front of the empty Avengers compound, felt like he could finally understand that feeling, however superficially. New York had been on fire tonight, but he watched the people celebrate the incoming new year like a fish in a bowl. He had left the company party early, unable to stand it. Their happiness. Their easy companionship.

“Any New Years' resolutions, boss?” he asked, turning the car off. One thing at a time.

Rhodey, after a long moment, snorted derisively. “You know if either one of us make any we’ll never keep ‘em.”

“How about we keep it short term, then? Once we hang up, you put on your dancing legs and have fun with the family.”

“Yeah, okay. Only if you get out of the damn car and go inside. Go hug the bots or something, tell FRIDAY you love her.”

Tony swallowed hard. “Square deal, Rhodey-pie. Starting now?”

“See you next week, Tones.”

The call disconnected and he took the phone away from his ear. The lockscreen - showing Iron Man, War Machine, and the Black Panther’s helmets stacked precariously on top of one another - made him smile briefly, but it fell away with a sharp pang in his gut as he remembered the old version: Cap’s cowl, Thor’s winged helmet, and Iron Man’s faceplate, side by side.

That was a different phone. A different suit, a different team. 

A different year.

“Happy New Year, Stark. You made it,” he muttered bitterly to himself, then got out of the car.

* * *

The compound was dark, only a few lights on, but FRIDAY had raised the temperature at some point. He crossed through the lobby to the interior barracks, his plan of attack well-established by now: he would head straight to his room. He would not pass go, or Steve’s room, or Nat’s. He would not collect 200 hundred dollars, or make sure the kitchen was still stocked with all of Wanda and Vision’s crazy experimental crap or call a certain royal. He would go to his room. He would go to sleep. He would wake up and do it all over again.

That’s why the piece of paper on the door was particularly shocking. He stared at it for a long moment, confused by its mere existence until the familiar shape of his writing caught his eye, tangling alongside another’s, neater and more self-conscious.

It was the piece of paper he and T’Challa had passed between themselves the first time they met to discuss the Accords after the fight. The bureaucrats had shouted over each other and Tony had been nursing a headache since Siberia, so he wrote a note to T’Challa and slid it to him like they were in grade school.

_‘You think they’ll even notice if we blow this popsicle stand?’_

T’Challa had frowned at the note, then Tony, who had just gestured around the room with a succinct eyebrow lift. T’Challa huffed, lips quirking, and had actually written back. _‘In a fight this would be the time to launch our surprise offensive.’_

_‘Only if we weren’t fighting each other while we were at it. Tell me all your secrets, kitty cat.’_

The paper was then filled with their hopes for the revised Accords. Now, a new note was written, in different pen.

_‘The first time I truly met Tony Stark. To you, Tony.’_

“Uh, FRIDAY?” Tony asked, pulled the paper down and running his fingers over the words.

“If you will proceed further into the compound, boss,” FRIDAY replied helpfully to his unanswered question.

“Is he in there? I mean of course he is, but where?” Tony asked, pulling open the door. In response, FRIDAY turned on one of the lights, revealing something on the wall.

“It’s still ten minutes to midnight, Cinderella,” she joked. “Why don’t you enjoy the ball?”

“You realize Cinderella has to run away from the prince afterwards, right?”

“Since when have you ever followed a script?”

Never, except in this case in might be a good idea. Tony hadn’t seen or heard from T’Challa in a month, and given the way they’d parted, it had made him incredibly nervous.

He’d kissed him. And T’Challa was gone the next day. 

Tony didn’t get to keep good things, he should have learned by now. It was pointless to keep trying. And yet, for T’Challa…for the chance that the kindness and humor and compassion he’d seen could even belong just a little to Tony, he’d do anything. He’d try again.

The second surprise was a picture that had grown somewhat famous over the past few months: T’Challa and Tony shaking hands amidst a sea of reporters and politicians, smiles on both their face as they finalized the first amended version of the Accords. _‘To legacy. To King T’Chaka of Wakanda.’_

Three through five were pictures of the New Avengers, such as they were, in various states of exhaustion after battles. There was one that had been taken the moment after the publicity photos were finished, where Peter, T’Challa, Tony, and Vision had all sort of slumped into one huge puddle. It ended up being the front page photo instead. _‘To the battles we have won, and to those we have not fought yet,’_ the note for this one read.

Next was Iron Man and Black Panther, feet entangled as they relaxed in a spider-web hammock Peter had strung up for them while they waited for an on-site debrief. _‘To the moments in between.’_

Five was Rhodey’s first day back, in the truly massive War Machine they had designed together to accommodate his injury. The team had fought together better than ever that day. _‘To the Avengers,’_ T’Challa wrote, and when Tony put the pictures in his coat he was surprised at how hard he was breathing, his face flushed as he was holding something back with great effort.

Six was a video message from Peter, who was at some science boot camp Tony had enrolled him in as a Christmas present. “Tony!” He said excitedly. His eyes were manic in the familiar I-have-been-in-a-lab-for-39-hours kind of way. “This is so great, I can’t believe this! I know I already thanked you, but seriously, thank you thank you thank you. I wish you were here, though; the instructors won’t let us blow anything up. I told them that Tony Stark said that explosions were the mark of true science, but for some reason they didn’t believe me. Anyway…Happy New Years, Mr. Stark. See you soon!”

Seven was a message from Vision, who had been asked to do some repair work on the International Space Station. “The men and women up here are fascinating, but I find it is the stars that are truly keeping me company. I hope you are not alone on this night, but if you are, I suggest a bit of star-gazing. Orion is supposed to be particularly bright, tonight.”

 _‘To good friends, old and new._ ’

Eight was a blanket of newspaper clippings and articles detailing his first few years as Iron Man. _‘2008 was the year that you became Iron Man. You changed the world, and despite what you may think sometimes, I believe it was for the better. To Iron Man.’_

And below that:

_‘To Ho Yinsen. May he be proud of what we’ve done.’_

Tony closed his eyes, hoping the same thing. He remembered when he blurted out “Yinsen would have liked you,” to T’Challa one day while they were working in the shop together, T’Challa waxing poetic with stars in his eyes about bringing Wakanda closer together without cutting them off from the outside world. Tony had admired him for that. T’Challa had refused to let himself be warped by his grief or anger.

He’d never told anybody, but Yinsen was barometer by which he rated everyone he met. He knew he loved someone when he could look at them and think how much Yinsen would have liked to meet them. Sometimes that love had not be rewarded, but Tony kept to it still. And T’Challa…knowing him had so far been reward enough.

Nine through eleven were: a playbill for Cats, the first play Tony had dragged T’Challa to; the beaten up pack of playing cards they had once spent an entire night playing with one night in Berlin; and schematics they had traded back and forth, Tony’s notes both precise and filled with various machine-related innuendos that T’Challa responded to with delightfully dry sarcasm.

_‘To partnerships, and belonging.’_

Twelve made his heart plummet and then soar to catch somewhere in his throat. It was a tiny little picture, Iron Man sailing in the skies, but it was the familiar art style that hit him hardest.

_‘Steve has told me that you two first met in 2012, in the middle of saving the world. He wanted you to have this, and I have promised him you wouldn’t destroy it. A king cannot break his promise, Tony. Be kind. To forgiveness, and to being forgiven.’  
_

Thirteen was a status update on Barnes’ progress with BARF. _‘To kindness and intelligence, the depths of which I have yet to see.’_ Tony snorted. Like that didn’t come from T’Challa’s pushing, his insistence that Tony was a good man. Tony was really only ever as good as the man at his back. He wanted to keep being this good, though. He wanted the feeling he got when he looked at the positive prognosis on Barnes. He wanted the hope T’Challa gave him. 

He just wanted T’Challa, period.

And this? Maybe this meant he was wanted back. Even after a month of radio silence, maybe he could still hope.

Fourteen was a collection of cards from children all over the world that had been sent to Black Panther. The ones spread over the counter top all featured Iron Man, helping the Panther save the day, little kids and teens encouraging them to keep fighting.  _‘Apparently, we have a good ‘aesthetic.’ We do look good together, I’ve always thought so. To heroism, however small, and the ripples it makes throughout the world.’_

Tony stole a few of the cards, tucking them in with the pictures and Steve’s painting, and followed the lights, rounding the corner into the living room. T’Challa looked up from the last few candles he was lighting and smiled as a song began to play.

Fifteen. _‘La Vie En Rose.’_  Tony felt his mouth work from grin to grimace and back again. “So my hope that you had dismissed that whole thing as a fever dream was kinda useless, huh?”

T’Challa’s smile faltered. “Tony-”

“I mean, Edith Piaf wailing away, us standing on the Eiffel Tower, and I kiss you? It’s a veritable storm of cliches. I would’ve marked it down to a dream myself.” His first instinct was always self-defense.

“Tony,” T’Challa said again, quietly, more firmly, stepping close. “I am deeply sorry. I did not mean to leave you that way. But our schedules are so hectic, and I couldn’t say what I wanted to say over the phone.”

“’Not interested’ is pretty easy to say, Pantherosity,” Tony mumbled to the ground, wanting so badly to lean into the embrace but not quite capable of letting himself. Letting himself have this. “Five syllables. Four, if you decided to mumble. Which, you don’t.” He was rambling. He was nervous.

T’Challa’s laugh rumbled in his chest. “Do you really think I would have done all this if I wasn’t interested?”

Tony finally gathered the courage to look up at him, giving in to his worse instincts, being selfish. “Okay. So tell me you love me, then.”

“I love you,” T’Challa said easily, as simple as breathing, and Tony felt his jaw drop. 

“You - you do?”

“I do. I should have called, I know, but I - I knew you might get the wrong idea, if you couldn’t see it -me- for yourself. The way I look at you. Ev-everyone has said I’m terribly obvious, but it can’t be helped. I want to be obvious. I want you to know how much I care for you. And I wanted to surprise you.”

“Consider me surprised,” Tony said dazedly. T’Challa smiled at him, dipping the pad of his thumb into the hollows of Tony’s face, as if memorizing him.

With his other hand, he reached to his neck and pulled out his necklace. There was another one now, tangled up in it, smaller and on a more delicate chain. A single vibranium claw hung from it like the world’s deadliest teardrop.

“I was also making this,” T’Challa whispered, lifting it over his head and placing it over Tony, fidgeting so it laid just so while Tony stared. Sixteen. “Be mine,” the king whispered, tugging Tony closer. 

“Turnabout fair play here?” Tony asked before their lips could touch, and T’Challa grinned. 

“I have been yours since that kiss, Tony. All you must do now is claim me.”

“10,” FRIDAY began. “9, 8. 7-”

“I can do that,” Tony said, to himself or to T’Challa or to both of them. “I can have this.” He’d lost so much, they both had, but T’Challa pressed impossibly closer he felt the pictures and paintings and letter in his jacket crunch in closer to his heart. Yeah, he’d nearly lost it all. But he’d gained more than he could have ever hoped for, too. 

“3, 2, 1! It is now 2017, gentlemen.”

Their lips touched, and fireworks exploded. Seventeen.

_Happy New Year, Stark. You made it._

“Oh!” Tony said, pulling away, pleased at mournful little noise T’Challa made. “I love you, too.” T’Challa’s eyes lit up and Tony found himself laughing, pulling him back in. “Now we may proceed.”

_To love, and trust, and your skin on mine. To us._

**Author's Note:**

> find me at my tumblaaa [here](http://aslightstep.tumblr.com)


End file.
